Research
Research
In its research and teaching, the Department of Government primarily focuses on comparative and Austrian politics. Its research is concerned with political behaviour, political actors, such as political parties and politicians, political institutions, the processes governed by these institutions, as well as their outcomes. It includes work on political participation, voting behaviour, parties and party competition, coalition politics and Austrian politics in general and is mostly based on rationalist and behavioural approaches.
Our goal is to conduct high-level, internationally competitive research in the area of Comparative Politics with the collaboration of international project partners and research networks. At the Faculty of Social Sciences the department is mainly engaged in the key research area ''Political Competition and Communication: Democratic Representation in Changing Societies'.
The department’s approach places it in the discipline’s empirical-analytical core and is mostly based on quantitative social science methods. To map empirical phenomena accurately, researcher in the department focus on the continuous development of survey design, as well as on the analysis of empirical data by applying the best suited statistical model. The department aims to achieve the best work on Austrian politics and to make important contributions to the international academic literature on Comparative Government and Politics.
An overview of current publications and activities at the department can be found below and on the personal websites of our team.
Publications
The Coalition Life-cycle in Central Eastern Europe
- Author(s)
- Torbjörn Bergman, Gabriella Ilonszki, Wolfgang C. Müller
- Abstract
This volume analyses the coalition life-cycle in ten countries in Central Eastern Europe, from pre-electoral alliances to government formation and portfolio distribution, to governing in coalitions, the events that eventually lead to a government termination, and electoral performance of coalition parties. This final chapter summarizes the main patterns of coalition politics and compares among the ten countries. In terms of the three models of coalition governance Hungary comes closest to the Dominant Prime Minister Model, Lithuania and Latvia approach the Ministerial Government Model, and Slovenia comes closest to the Coalition Compromise Model. The chapter also discusses how these findings contrast with the general patterns known from the literature on coalition politics in Western Europe. A few of the patterns of coalition politics are similar, including the relative frequency of different types of coalition governments and the increase and spread of the use of coalition governance mechanisms, such as written coalition contracts. Other features are more distinct: there have been fewer single-party governments and there is a stronger tendency to the Ministerial Government Model than in Western Europe. Over time, processes of learning and adjustment to coalition governance can be identified, however without a linear and general trend. Much of the change is rooted in party system changes, for instance the reversal of the initial growth of new political parties and the recent decline of the effective number of parties (ENP). While a less tangible result, the chapters also stress the role of personalities and animosities to impact coalition considerations.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- Umeå University, Corvinus University of Budapest
- Pages
- 522–576
- No. of pages
- 76
- Publication date
- 01-2019
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506012 Political systems
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Social Sciences
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/6da3255f-e2f8-49f9-94ef-0d7c5a7e8d70